The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-08-25
TIED-UP AT HERON.
An INCIDENT OF TRANsCONTI.
MENTAL TRAVEL.
Methods Of Killing Time in . Dead Min.
ing Town-The Barkeeper Com 60 to the
Rescue Of the Bored Passengers and
Gets mp Rattling Prise-fght for Them

ing TOWn-The Barkeeper Com 90 to the
Rescue Of the Bored Passenger and
Gets up Rattling Prise-aght for Then
The train on the Northern Pacific rail-
road which left Portland, Ore, on the
last Friday in June was remarkable one
or, at least, the journey 1t made was re-
markable. In the first place, it was de.
layed. You think, perhaps, that there
could have been nothing remarkable
about that, but there you are greatly in
error Of all the many charms of a
transcontinental trip by rail principal
one Is the fidelity of the train to the
schedule. Most of the roads-and GER
tainly the one speak of is an example
follow natural roadways, using one long
valley after another on either side of the
still longer and more level prairie, itself
not q valley exactly, but the bed or
bottom of prehistoric sea or
lake. The Rockies and the par
allel chains beyond them offer tre-
mendous grades, but time is allowed for
that; and leaving that out the trains roll
along across the majestic levels so regu-
larly and so reliably that it is difficult to
realize that one is passing from civiliza-
ton to civilization over a vast wilder
ness. Take that particular train, for in
stance. Its stalwart engines, often
changed, pulled baggage-car, hotel
car, two Pullman sleepers, smoking
car, an emigrant sleeper and an ordinary
first-class coach-leaving out the immi-
grant sleeper, just such train as one
would take to Washington or Chicago,
and the passengers were in no wise pecu-
liar. Not one man wore his trousers in
his boots, or exposed q pistol or bowie.
The men were of the sort you meet in
the far rWest-one from London, one from
Berlin, ,one with an office in San Francisco
and Glasgow and his home in St. Paul
ESQ as to be handy to his business" he
explained), two or three commercial trav-
elers, two men from California bound
East with their wives and daughters for
q summers rest, and so on. As for the
ladies, it would be work of supereroga-
tion to say "God bless them" But after
all, there was and always is one great
and important difference between a
transcontinental train and any short line
in the East, and that Is that in these
more important ones all the passengers
become we'll acquainted, talk together,
exchange books, and gossip and enter
into the spirit of the trip, which Is to
make the pleasant journey the pleasant
est ever known, if possible.
And such journey as that was, and
is, and will be for years to come! All!
how much too rapidly 1t was made, as
we could not see then, but cannot help
but feel now that it is all recollection.
Think of the wondrous beauty of the
ride along Clark's Fork, river almost
like the Hudson. A brakeman said he
had counted thirty-five deer from the
car windows under the rustling forest
boughs where the shade was flecked with
. weaving lace-work of sunshine. No
one believed him until suddenly some
one said, "There's one nowV and some
one else cried, "Oh, there are twoW and
presently deer grew-not tiresome but
a-plenty. Next the pocket maps, forever
unfurled and handed about, showed that
in another hour we would be in Idaho.
Does the name sound especially pretty or
significant of beauty to you who have not
been there? No? Well, know then that
on the last Saturday in last June Idaho
burst upon the view of three-score pas
sengers as place celestial, a garden, a
vast field of greensward not fecked with
flowers, but tesselated with great floral
blocks, now red, now yellow, now purple
and now of all colors blended. And
travellers came aboard and told of hunt.
ing-in the north beyond the flowers and
there were caribou and
bear and antelope more plenty than Hia-
watha boasted in his day. Suddenly, as
night fell and Montana was reached, a
rumor few the length of the train that
there was "a wash-out" ahead, and that
we were to be tied up at Heron, the next
stopping place. Twenty-four hours was
the stay predicted for us, but, as it turned
out, the company put men to work at
night by calcium light, and the ten or
twelve hours halt that followed gave all
. good nights rest and yet did not pre-
vent the train from Catching up" and
making the end Of the long ride on
schedule time.
Heron is q dead mining town. You
sec many dead towns in the far West
towns that spring up where work on
new railroad has necessitated the estab-
lishment of temporary centre or head
quarters, where mineral has falsely been
thought to exist in paying quantities or
where spectators have supposed human
fly would swarm and form another Chi
cago or Kansas City. Heron was none
of these. 1t was the station for those to
stop at who made the famous rush" to
the Cour d'Alene mines few years ago
when thousands went into the hills with.
out money or food and while the ground
was covered knee-deep with snow
only to suffer and starve and even
freeze to death while struggling
back again. They all left the cars ct
Heron. They never will forget the
place, neither will 1t forget them.
Everyone had at least little money, and
the adventurers and rogues in their
midst. hastily flung up the long row of
houses you still see facing the track. At
least every other house was . bar-room
and gambling den. New York and Lon
don go to sleep O. nights, but Paris never
sleeps, and Heron was another Paris.
All night the pianos that sprang up like
wild flowers ratified and banged out their
music, and the pop of champagne corks
blended with the crack of pistols. Every
morning when the storekeepers swept
oul their places the street was Uttered
with playing cards, for in plethoric
wealth, such as existed In Heron, no one
ever used pack twice. Why, 1t was 80
busy and grand place that a man far
away, over the Fork, made 81 profit q